You Are Not Watching Television

I hope LB will excuse a post that’s not about law, sociology, politics or NU. It’s about this whole blogging, internet thing.

If you are reading this, then you are not watching TV. That’s a good thing for everyone except TV network executives, and I thought this article, which I first found on Andrew Sullivan’s blog (there you go) was an interesting examination of the implications of that fact. Here’s the trailer — Wikipedia, in every language in which it is published, represents about 100 million hours of human endeavor. Where did those people find the time? Well, some might have come from the 200 billion hours of TV watched every year in the USA alone.

The flip side, of course, is that while I am writing this, I am not working.

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2 Responses to You Are Not Watching Television

Thanks for the link. I’d like to add that blogs and the internet have not only competed with TV for cultural attention, but they have changed TV-watching practices into something more active. I’m thinking of Sarah Gatson’s work on Buffy the Vampire Slayer internet communities and all of the work that goes into something like Television Without Pity. There were fewer opportunities to “talk back” to TV 20 years ago, making it a more passive experience then compared to now.